Rest In Turmoil
by Daydreamblvr6
Summary: Clark Kent is dead.  Post season eight finale.
1. The Levy Was Dry

**Hello all!**

**This is only about a century too late. It takes place in the time between seasons 8 and 9 when Lois has disappeared and Clark has declared himself dead. (I would have posted it earlier, but I wasn't able to.)**

**These are a series of one-shots all chronicling that time period. Some follow each other; others have nothing in common besides the basic premise, but all can be read independently. However, they are arranged in this order purposefully.**

**I hope this makes sense.**

**Happy (hopefully) reading! And please do review. I'd love that very much.**

**(Oh, by the way, I don't own 'em.)**

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A cry woke him several days after Clark Kent's death, the first time he'd slept since burying most of himself.

Before he remembered not to feel, he realized the cry belonged to him and that he _hurt _like he never had before, and never would again.

Feelings were useless; they got people killed. He'd make it a mantra if he had to.

He almost wondered when he realized that wondering and feeling were like lovers, always tangled up.

He tuned his ear to emotion-filled cries, the kind that did not belong to him, and set about the new life, if one used the definition loosely, that he'd begun to create.

Brown hair, hazel eyes, camera flashes, green eyes, blonde hair, red hair and warm eyes all pirouetted and leapt and tap-tap-tap danced within his heart but he was cutting that organ out minute by ever quieter minute.

_Kal_-_El_. _I am Kal-El. _He'd learn to be indifferent toward it, he was sure.

He'd learn not to turn when he heard a name resembling Clark or Kent. He'd learn to dress in black without thinking and answer a plea without smiling and run without stopping and sleep without dreaming.

The nightmares of tombstones would stop because the image would be lost on him, eventually.

He'd learn not to love Lois Lane's memory and he'd learn to forget what he was supposed to forget.

_Kal-EL._ A bitter thought tried to form, but he took it and tore it to pieces. Bitterness required humanity and he finally did not want to be human.

Destiny. Inescapable.

He hadn't slept long enough. He'd gotten better at this the past few days.

"_Clark, you coward! You always run; you _always _run! I need you...Did you have to add yourself to my list?"_

He recalled a time, another lifetime, another person he'd been, when he would have blurred right to her at the first sound of distress she made. She'd learn as well; she'd learn not to cry for him, scream for him, shout at him. She'd learn that at last he'd meant what he'd said. She'd learn to hate this new person who wasn't her weak and stupid best friend. She'd learn the same lesson that he had—humanity was dark and hardly worth saving, but he didn't have anything better to do.

Clark Kent would have recoiled from and promptly hit anyone who would think, and say, so. Too bad, so sad.

Because Clark Kent was dead.

And he was going to stay that way.

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**Thanks much for reading! :)**


	2. Playlist

**Hello again!**

**I'm excited because this is my first ever chapter two! I hope you enjoy it. Please, please review!**

**Happy (hopefully) reading!**

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He pitched his phone the first time it rang, probably into orbit. "Mom" had popped up on the screen.

He could have laughed. He didn't.

They'd never find him. What chance did they have?

He almost city-shopped. How…human of him.

_Kal-El. I am Kal-El. _He might as well just chant _mantra,_ _mantra,_ _mantra_. _Feelings are useless; they get people killed. _It almost meant nothing. Ten days of repetition will do that.

Killing Clark Kent was harder than he'd thought. He still woke up to his own voice, his _old _voice. He still often wondered what had happened to his partner and what was happening to the blonde hair, green eyes combo. He still dreamt of being buried alive in a grave marked Henry James Olsen. He still felt, _felt, _that he deserved it. He still felt and that was all of his problem. Old habits die hard, just like old personas.

He was going to have to get a better grip on the shovel.

First things first, buy some gloves. Immerse himself in his work, a technique he had perfected. Funny that coping mechanisms would become a lifestyle; funny that methods borne of overwhelming emotion would become emotionless action-reactions; funny to a person with a sense of humor. He'd managed to ditch that pretty quickly. He could have been proud. He wasn't.

"_Clark Kent is dead." _Boy was he ever presumptuous. "_Clark Kent is dead."_ Nothing was ever that easy. It struck him then that when he gave up humanity he also gave up the ability not to sound like a broken record. Too much of everything on Earth was emotional, his thoughts were so limited.

Luckily for Kal-El, a not-as-fortunate human was calling.

A little girl looked up at him from the cradle his steel arms made for her, smiling past salt stains and tiny fingers underneath curly blonde hair half-captive in pigtails. Her dimples grew exponentially when he leapt lightly over the car she'd almost died under and giggles pressed into his chest in the direction of his vaguely warmed heart. He could have grinned back. He wouldn't.

Her mother was a blonde with hazel eyes and a smile to rival her daughter's. Her father had peppery red hair and the warmest green eyes Kal-El had ever seen.

They tried to thank him, but their murmurs of gratitude were tossed about in the whirlwind he created when he couldn't leave fast enough. Their smiles didn't fade and their gratitude was not lessened; their joy echoed in Kal-El's aftershock for a week like an annoying ringtone that jingles within a mind not occupied.

_I needed you _was almost drowned out by it.

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**Thank you for reading! :)**


	3. All Around the Mulberry Bush

**Hi!**

**So, chapter three. **

**I don't own nothin'. Please don't read too much into the double negatives.**

**Reviews would make my day! Week! Month! Year! (I may be a little attention starved.)**

**Happy (hopefully) reading. :)**

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_He didn't want to lose himself. He didn't want to die._

_He didn't want to be alone. He didn't want to hurt._

He didn't want to think like this.

He couldn't control his dreams.

He hated the truth they told him. He really didn't want to know.

No prevention existed. Sleep was, eventually, inevitable and dreams, or nightmares such as it were, were stronger than he.

He wanted to give up. To die for real. And not have to deal with this not-want and the emptiness that teased him with the promise to swallow him up and never delivered.

His will completely shattered and he caught pieces now and again to fling them with the intensity and strength only he possessed. The strength that made anything a weapon. He liked to imagine those pieces of will were boomerangs.

He liked to imagine a lot of things. None of them pleasant.

He didn't know it, but he tortured himself on purpose, his point being to retain some of the humanity Kal-El seemed so intent on destroying. His personalities were beginning to develop their own personalities. That must be the end. Of what, he wasn't certain. How could he be? His emotions had been his entire reasoning system in the past and obliterating them had left him compass-less. Except they weren't obliterated, well the useful ones were, but the ones that made him want to press his arms against his chest until his body blended, painfully, together into a mass of alien mess were most decidedly not. What fine luck.

He _hurt_. He hurt so much it was hard to breathe and he didn't even need to. He hurt so much that _life _had become just another word. He hurt so much he couldn't stop it, didn't want to, did want to.

He hurt so much he wasn't making any sense. But then again, when his world crumbled around him and he dug out his own heart and vaporized his own soul he'd forgotten the definition of _sense_. He'd had to, he wasn't making any of it.

The women he rescued cried for him, tears he could not shed. The men remained silent and touched him not at all, refusing to break his meager strength. Contradictory, weapon-making strength and meager strength. Again with sense. There was no sense for him; he didn't regret it.

He didn't regret it.

He didn't regret it.

_He didn't want…_

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**Thank you for reading! :)**


	4. X

**Hiya!**

**Here we are again. Chapter four now.**

**If you think it's any good, or if you think it's lousy, let me know please. Reviews feed the muse, and she's really hungry lately.**

**Happy (hopefully) reading!**

**(I don't own a thing.)**

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It took him seven days to forget his middle name. Six days to forget his favorite food. Five days to forget he ever had a favorite song. Four days to forget how to stop once he started running. Three days to forget how to match socks. Two days to forget how to type. Only one to forget what he looked like.

He still remembered every detail he'd ever known about _her _after thirty-six days, fourteen hours, seventeen minutes, and approximately forty-two seconds. He also remembered how to count. And tell time. He remembered the name she gave him and heard her voice, with the eye roll inflection and all, say it over and over and over as though it were a favorite record that gets put on time and time again. The pattern of her happy heartbeat, captured as well in his alien ears, punctuated it as white noise.

It made him heady.

It made him feel drunk, or what he imagined drunk to feel like.

What he wouldn't give to be able to actually drop the human in him. But she was too much a part of him. Such a shame he hadn't known until that precious piece had been torn from him, maliciously ripped to tiny jagged pieces, and flung like falling, dying stars into the wound created from its extraction.

The wound still throbbed.

It would take him fifty-five days, or so, to learn first aid.

When he slept, rare as the occasion was, he was completely human, unable to outrun or ignore or crush to dust his malignant spirits. They danced about him, marveling in the playground that was his shattered soul, shattered by his own hands, wreaking havoc merrily within his heart. Her face twinkled on his eyelids no matter how brief a time they remained closed and her memory infused itself among the fractions of him. In his dreams, and his nightmares, she lived and spoke and teased and bantered and bickered and smiled and glanced and read him like the open book she'd always told him he was. His mothers joined her in her sport, tag-teaming him until bitterness broke his tenuous hold on her, the hold he both required and abhorred. The fading of her image prompted his vocal alarm every time.

It took him seventy-nine days to learn he only required two hours of sleep every two weeks as long as he kept to the sun and didn't think.

_There's a phone booth…_

Indeed, there was a phone booth. One of so few left. But they always managed to find one. And Kal-El hadn't been able to miss one since. Kal-El didn't have as tight a grip on Clark Kent as he liked to think. Or perhaps Clark Kent just didn't have a grip. No way for the alien anomaly to tell. Not that he tried.

After the girl with the curly blonde hair, big hazel eyes, and innocent, wondering smile, he saved a lime-green haired teenager with violet eyes and no smile to speak of. He didn't think he did it on purpose.

It took him ninety-two days to learn to stop looking.

It took him one hundred twenty-four days to learn to stop counting.

And it took him one hundred twenty-five days to learn he never could.

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**Thank you for reading! :)**


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